Do You Know Your Most Important Number?

Unlocking Business Success: The Power of the MIND Methodology

Have you ever wondered what truly drives a successful business? Dive into this episode as we explore the heartbeat of every thriving company: its Most Important Number. Lee Benson, a business magnate, reveals the secret behind his astounding growth: the MIND Methodology.

• Discover the essence of your business's Most Important Number.
• Unravel the key drivers that guide every pivotal decision.
• Learn how the MIND Methodology transforms businesses, aligning teams with a shared vision.

Meet our distinguished guest, Lee Benson. From starting as the first employee at Metallic Services to becoming a titan with companies spanning 60 countries, Lee's journey is nothing short of remarkable. After selling his aerospace enterprise for a staggering 9-figure sum, he embarked on a mission to share his profound insights and help other leaders shine.

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Key Takeaways

• Understanding Your Most Important Number is Vital - Lee emphasizes that businesses often get caught up in numerous metrics, but identifying the single most pivotal number can provide clarity and direction.
• Drivers are the Actions That Influence Your Most Important Number - By isolating and optimizing these drivers, businesses can create a roadmap for achieving their primary objectives.
• The MIND Methodology Enhances Decision-Making and Resource Allocation - When business leaders have clarity on their MIND, they can allocate resources (both time and money) more efficiently, ensuring that they're investing in areas that yield the highest returns.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Discover the MIND Methodology: Understand the revolutionary approach to business metrics that centres on the Most Important Number and Drivers.

Strategic Focus: Understand the importance of identifying and prioritizing key metrics and drivers to streamline decision-making and resource allocation.

Value Creation: Delve into the interconnected cycle of value creation for companies, employees, customers, and the broader community.

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Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

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More About Today's Guest, Lee Benson

Lee Benson is a seasoned entrepreneur and leadership expert with a remarkable track record of transforming businesses and driving exceptional growth. With a humble start as the first employee of Metallic Services in 1982, Lee took the reins when the company faced dire circumstances in 1993, purchasing it in a debt-ridden state with just three employees and a brilliant idea. Through visionary leadership and strategic expansion into partner companies like Able Engineering and Able Aerospace, Lee orchestrated the growth of his enterprises from a mere three employees to a thriving workforce of 500, serving over 2,000 customers across 60 countries. Notably, his businesses achieved an impressive 15 consecutive years of 20% compounded average annual growth, culminating in the successful sale of the company to Textron Aviation in 2016.

Driven by a passion for understanding what differentiates effective leaders, Lee developed an intentional culture deeply intertwined with financial success. He recognized that leadership development was the linchpin, fostering a value creation mindset that resonated throughout the organization, benefitting not only the company and its customers but also the broader community. Post-sale, Lee found his true purpose in helping other leaders achieve sustained improvement in their organizations, leading him to establish ETW, where he continues to make a meaningful impact. Beyond his professional endeavors, Lee enjoys spending his free time playing the guitar, reading, staying active, and cherishing moments with loved ones.

Learn more about working with Lee: https://themindmethodology.com/speaking/

A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager:

So Lee, in business, I feel like it's more competitive than ever. There are more tactics and strategies than ever. And there's this feeling of overwhelm that all leaders feel because we're in this world where we can do a million different things for almost anyone at almost any time. And it's really hard to know what the right thing is to spend our time, our budgets, and our focus on. And so in a world where you can do anything, how do you figure out what the right thing is to do? I feel like your methodology and your experience can help us figure that out today.

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Lee Benson:

Yeah, that's a huge question. I'm a giant fan of "do less better." Like, figure out what's working and double down on that and really do it, don't do 50 or 60 other things. And for anybody running an organization out there, if you were to answer this question, how does your organization create value for your customers? How would you answer that? And if you talk to each employee within your organization, how do you create value for the organization? What would their answer be to that? And so I look at it that way, what is the real value that we bring to the marketplace? And there are so many different businesses. You know, I come from an aerospace background and a consulting background, a few different businesses. I'm on my seventh company, I've started from scratch, I've had exits from a few million to well into nine figures. And selling more by creating more actual value in the marketplace is the golden ticket. And it's the lifeblood of every single organization. So I've thought a lot about that. So how do you come up with what is that thing that you need to work on? Well, for me, let's just hyper-connect with our customers, whatever our business is, do focus groups, find out what's most important for our customers, what does winning look like for the customers, and we need to make sure whatever we do is a win-win. It's not about us getting a check. And so many people, I think, focus on that. It's creating value, getting our customers in a position where they win bigger because they work with us. And then now we've got something we can sustain and scale and have that relationship for the long term.

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Mark Drager:

I think that's such a good point. I was looking at a customer journey for one of our clients. And I noticed that when they started their customer journey, when they ended it, it started with the customer making contact with the company or the brand. And it ended with the sale. And I was like, okay, that's a great selling journey. But your customer has problems long before they ever find you. And they are going to go on with their lives and their business long after they work with you and the sale is closed. And so shouldn't we spend a bit more time trying to figure out where you fit within the starting point and the endpoint of your customer, as opposed to just looking at how you're going to sell them? Yeah, and I think what you're saying helps us focus more on that entire customer journey.

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Lee Benson:

Yeah, really understand what's important to the customer. This is what winning looks like for them. This is what makes them feel good. This is what keeps them up at night. This is how we can make that experience better for them, make them more profitable, have a more enjoyable life, whatever that customer is looking for, the better we understand that, the way easier to sell, way easier.

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Mark Drager:

So you're the creator of this thing called the MIND method. And for anyone who knows you, it's really focused on being able to discover your most important number and the drivers for that. Can you help us understand what the MIND method is and why it's so powerful?

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Lee Benson:

The short version of the MIND methodology is that it is a way for organizations to create value faster and do it very intentionally. And I think the most important job and number one job for every CEO, founder, you know, top leader in the organization is to continually increase the value of the organization. So the simplicity of this makes it wildly powerful at the top of the organization for the senior team. And it represents the entire company. There's one number that does two things above all others that says you're winning or losing the game. Once a company is established, it's usually some version of profit or cash flow. And secondarily, it has to drive the majority of the right behaviours. And so at the top, if let's say it's cash flow, let's say it's profitability, whatever that might be. All the people stuff is wildly important. If culture isn't good, you're not going to have employees engaged in creating more value, which is what you want them to be engaged in. So like everything's subordinate to that. And then as you cascade through the organization, whether you have just a small team, and there's really only one number and one group, or you could be 50 employees, 100 employees, 1000s of employees, every function will have their own most important number that does those same two things, whether it's HR, sales, marketing, etc. And I think it's kind of fascinating when I look at sales and marketing I almost never see them really at the hip with each other.

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Mark Drager:

Oh, no. Oh, no, not not not at all.

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Lee Benson:

Right. And so what's the most important number for marketing? What's the most important number for sales? What about product or service delivery? I think those three functions should be just completely working together and leveraging what each other is doing. But on the marketing side, again, there are so many different kinds of businesses, right? But I look at it as generating qualified leads. And what is a qualified lead? If you ask the question, what's a 10-state for the perfect qualified lead? Well, this percentage of time or higher, they close, there's this much profitability, this persona, there's a much longer, you know, customer lifecycle that we go through. And then on the sales side when they're getting these qualified leads, and we're constantly improving the quality of these qualified leads that come in, so they get stronger and stronger. It's about profitable sales. It's not just about revenue, or the number of sales, you know, coming in. But it's, it's interesting to watch both sales and marketing measure activity, like somehow that's really going to help the business. So they are doing themselves a huge disservice if they don't work very, very closely together, because their goal as a team is to bring in more and more profitable sales. And then the delivery of that service or product is also incredibly important. I'm sure you've heard this before. But everybody in an organization is in sales, they just are. And you know, you're selling, how amazing it is to work at the company. So whether you know, great employees want to come work, they're talking to customers, people are touring, you know, whatever it happens to be, but everybody needs to work together. And so in the MIND methodology, you have a most important number at the top of the organization. Every function has a most important number that says above all others that are winning or losing, it's how they create value for the organization. And it drives the majority of the right behaviours. And every team develops their own most important number. So they really own it. And we get to challenge it to make sure it's the right one. And then they come up with a list of drivers, which are essentially categories of work that they should be really good at leveraging in order to improve their most important number. So their goal is, let's say, as profitable sales, and we're going to measure it year to date. So we've got this plan for the year and how the sales are going along at any point in time. Are we on track? Are we at risk? Are we behind? Are we overdriving it and then show me the best work that you're doing to stay on track or overdrive that number? It's wildly simple. Now, there will probably be other things, and there always is that each team will measure. But we only measure those things to help us make better decisions to improve our most important number. It could be five additional measures, it could be 50. But the test to make sure we're not just doing an activity is, have a clear definition of how measuring those additional things will help you make better decisions to improve profitability, customer experience, cash flow, you know, whatever that thing is. Does that make sense?

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Mark Drager:

Oh, it's totally powerful. So two things, one thought, and then a second question. First, when you were talking about the friction between sales and marketing, I recall being at HubSpot's inbound event in 2019. And there was a speaker who had run all of these tests. They were an advertiser, but they looked at changing ad placement, they looked at ad creative, ad copy, they looked at how leads are onboarded, how they're qualified, they looked at every step. And then, you know, they had percentages, and I can't recall them all off the top of my head. But it was something like, you know, if we came up with better copy, we might see a 15 or 20% lift. If we had better placement or targeting, we might see a 50% lift. And as they went down the line, when they finally got to if we can get marketing and sales to talk to each other, and so that way marketing is generating interest in qualified leads and sales understands what marketing is doing, there was something like a 2,000% lift. It always stuck with me how different people, marketers approach or advertisers approach lead generation, and how salespeople approach working in closing leads. And when we can bring those teams together, you can actually see some of the biggest lift. Now, the question I have for you about the most important number, the driver is if we're setting an organization's top-level number. So I'm the CEO and the CFO, I'm the business owner, I'm the entrepreneur, this is my most important number. And then if each department has its own most important number, and then theoretically each, I guess employee might have its own most important number. And then does every project or every initiative also have its most important number? And are you just creating this kind of hierarchy or this cascade where each level down supports whatever the next one is up the chain,

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Lee Benson:

Every team will have their own most important number. Some organizations actually give a number to each salesperson, but generally it's a team, and every team member will have a set of outcome-based responsibilities for the role. Usually, it's no more than two to four. And they may have a list of 20 or 30 capabilities they need to have so they can achieve those outcomes. But when you ask a leader, how do I create value for the organization? When they deploy this methodology they say, well, here's our most important number. This is why and they defend it. And this is the best work we're doing to improve it. And when my number improves, it improves the next one up all the way to the top of the organization. Wildly simple, incredibly powerful. You ask a non-supervisory employee how do you create value for the organization within the MIND methodology. And they say, well, I'm on this team, this is our most important number, here are the outcomes I'm responsible for. And this is the best work that I'm doing to do my part to help my team achieve their most important number. So we don't go off track throughout the year. That's how it's applied. Now, when you think about organizations, Mark, that you've worked with, you know, how many employees are that clear about the bigger goals?

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Mark Drager:

(laughs) I'm sorry, I'm laughing. (continues to laugh)

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Lee Benson:

Great answer, by the way.

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Mark Drager:

I had this misconception that as we continue to move up the market, you know, and as budgets got bigger, as projects got bigger, as we started working with national brands, or international companies, I thought, you know, like, Okay, I remember walking into a meeting once, where we had every senior executive, or an international insurance company at this meeting. I remember I was like, 27, or 28. And I was thinking, I'm going to lead a three-hour strategy session with like, 14 people, and I thought, How much money are they spending on this project on this, like just being around the boardroom table with me? And I remember being shocked when I left, how we spent the entire three hours just trying to make sure everyone was on the same page, I never forgot that. The bigger the company, the bigger the project, the more experience you have, no matter what it is, you're never going to walk into a situation, or someone's going to perfectly hand you a brief or as a leader, where every single employee is going to exactly understand what it is you're speaking about, in the way that you're hoping that they do. And so making things more simple, making things more clear, and then creating some kind of way to help us with our decision-making as we go along. I think that that's an extremely powerful thing.

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Lee Benson:

Yeah, in the MIND methodology at the highest level, we think about three things: alignment, decisions, and accountability. Are we fully aligned in all the things that we can do to improve what's most important, and then are we making the best decisions throughout the entire organization to do the right work at the right time in the right order, IE, will create the most value? And then third, continually improving the culture of accountability. You know, at a higher percentage of the time, people should be doing what they said they would when they said they would. And this is a really big part of what you've heard called organizational trust. Like the people that come through, they end up getting most of the work, they get the opportunities. Others that don't, they'll usually have excuses, or something else came up that I thought was more valuable. But when you ask them to justify it, they haven't even thought of the ROI or return on investment for it. And so when you list all the things that an organization could do to improve what's most important, it's very helpful to rack and stack those things by ROI. What's the value going to be for the company? And some are easy, some are hard, some take more resources. You factor all that stuff in. But generally, out of a list of 25 or 30 things, two or three of them will create way more value than all the others combined. So again, like I said, in the beginning, let's do less better. Let's really double down on what needs to get done and not be afraid of that hard work. And it's actually a lot of fun. It feels amazing when you win. But I think a lot of teams drift towards, well, I don't want to do the work, I don't understand it, maybe I'm not that good at it. So let's do a bunch of other stuff to say, look how hard I'm working. And again, activities don't equal results. And what we care about is creating continually more and more value. And one thing I would say is that I think it's really important to have a definition of what it means to be a leader within an organization. And the one that I like, and I've applied to all of my businesses and hundreds of companies and thousands of leaders out there have adopted it is leaders in this organization get results. And they foster an environment where every team member is intrinsically motivated and empowered to create more value over time. That's what it means to be a leader. You have to do that.

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Mark Drager:

I mean, people can pick up your book, Your Most Important Number. They can reach out to your organization, Execute to Win, and they can hire you. But short of buying your book or hiring you, you're out here evangelizing this method. But whether we accept it, and we leverage it, and we start to get way better results from it. I mean, you don't make any money off that. It's not like you're out here trying to sell something other than this great concept. And so I kind of have to ask two questions here. One, you know, the whole, like, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and you're just gonna keep hitting this stuff. So obviously, you're very committed to the MIND Method. But there are other frameworks. There are other operating systems out there. There's EOS and there's all, I mean, there are endless numbers of them. So what is it that the MIND Method does that others don't? And how did you arrive at it and become so passionate about it?

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Lee Benson:

Yeah. And you're right, there's scaling up and 40x and OKRs. And literally 1000s of operating methodologies that consulting companies have put together and they deploy. The challenge with virtually all of them, and I've studied most, is that they make “process” more important than what's most important. So you mentioned, for example, ELS. Now, one, I think, any honest effort to improve how an organization performs and is creating more value, I applaud. Greg, go for it. At least you're understanding there's value in being intentional around this. So pick something and try it, but constantly iterate and improve.

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Lee Benson:

And a difference with the mind methodology is that every decision, every action is through the lens of improving what's most important, that's it. And most of the others are wildly complicated, they teach you a whole new language. You know, I'll ask folks that are deploying some of these popular operating systems that you and I just discussed, and the CEOs will say, "Oh, they're amazing, they're incredible." But then when I started interviewing people, when you get down to layers, it's gone. It's just not working.

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Lee Benson:

One of the biggest things that I realized in my companies, which have ranged from just a few employees to over 500 employees, my personal businesses, is that traditional goal setting doesn't stand the test of time. Now sales is a little easier, you gotta hit this number, it's got to be profitable sales. But across the board within an organization, it doesn't stand the test of time. You know, it's usually some process of come up with one or two goals or three goals every quarter, get it approved by your manager, and rinse and repeat. And when you go audit those goals, 95% or more are just not very thoughtful.

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Lee Benson:

And I think the way, what I found is the way people really like to engage is in a team sport. Here's our team, here's our most important number, here's the role I have, here's the work I'm doing, the best work I'm doing to help improve it, to do my part, for watching that number grow over time. And maybe it's a ticket to play, maybe it's a safety number, or something else around compliance, it doesn't go down because that could take a company out. People enjoy that a whole lot more, and it catches fire on its own, which is really cool to see. It causes cross-functional collaboration, for example, sales, marketing, customer service, all these different functions. "Hey, what's your number? What are you doing? Here's what we're doing. How can we work together? Can I help you improve yours? Can you help us improve ours?" It catches fire on its own virtually every single time in any type of organization of any size. Whereas the other ones go into an OKR organization, it just backs off a little bit, or EOS or scaling up or 40x, all the others back off a little bit, and everybody just drops it. And so I don't believe it stands the test of time. Whereas this actually catches fire and stands the test of time.

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Lee Benson:

An amazing first step for anyone is just to get the book, read the book, and the whole thing is an easy read. The entire methodology is outlined, the history of sort of where it came from. In the last chapter is a DIY chapter. I want people to be able to do this on their own. And I just think if we have a world out there where everybody's really focused on creating value, not what's wrong with things and why things won't work, it's just going to be a way better world. I just love it. Like this is amazing work. And I want to spread it. I want this in millions of organizations someday. And that's my goal.

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Mark Drager:

Lee, two more questions for you before we wrap up. Should your most important number be tied to activity or tied to outcome? Let's hit that question. And then I'll hit you with the final one.

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Lee Benson:

Yeah, the most important number for an organization or any team is a measure of the value that they create. So it doesn't matter what the activities are, whatever work they do needs to be continually increasing that value. So some activities are high value, and some are not. But it's a measure of value, it doesn't measure an activity.

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Mark Drager:

I love that. And that's powerful. Because often when you're dealing with like, okay, it's just about like, just get the activities and just pick up the phone or just generate some leads, or just get started with something and we're so busy focused on like views or clicks or landing page visits or email collections or whatever it might be. And then eventually people go like, great, did that actually do anything for us?

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Lee Benson:

Yeah. And think about that, if all of these things that people are doing, and they apply it to improving their most important number. Now they know why they're doing it and they, they adjust quickly. They change course if need be. Don't just keep doing it over and over and over again. Because you were told to know you do things you improve your team's most important number. And if it's not working, you bring it up to the team and say we need to change.

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Mark Drager:

I love it. I love it so much because it provides so much simplicity because even through the process, it forces you to make hard decisions and cut away kind of the wheat from the chaff, I think is what they say. Yeah. Final question for you. You've grown businesses, you've exited businesses, you've had a nine-figure exit. In your experience. What is your number one tip or strategy to sell more?

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Lee Benson:

Strategy is about 3% and 97% is execution. So if you want to sell more, what is the addressable market? And then what's the sweet spot within that addressable market that you should have your team going after, and this is marketing and customer service and sales, everybody working together on that? Short example, on the aerospace side, we had a couple of 1000 customers, our top 25 customers made up about 65-70% of our business, and we only had about 23% of the market share within those customers that we wanted. We doubled down on that within a couple of years, we doubled the business. Every business is different. So look at your addressable market, and you could call it out of that. What's your strategic addressable market the most profitable best customers? Great customers are amazing, right? Bad customers. Not so amazing. But we learned in all those scenarios, but that would be my advice.